The pervasiveness of slut shaming

I wandered over to Feministing this morning and found this article from alternet about abusive relationships and the denial of condoms and birth control as a form of abuse. The article was interesting and presented an angle that I had never thought about but this paragraph bothered me:

"The first time I got pregnant against my will, I had the baby," she says. Along with several STDs. (He'd been her only partner.) After a stint in jail for violating an ex's order of protection, he was back, promising never to hurt her, gushing about family happiness.

Did you catch it? The reassurance that this woman, who had been abused and impregnated and had STDs passed on to her, had only had one sexual partner - her abusive boyfriend - and therefore is not a slut? It's as if we must be told that she has had only one sexual partner in order to feel sympathy, to prevent us from passing judgement. It's such a small act of slut-shaming - the opposite, really, of slut shaming - of reassurance that this woman was not a slut but it functions in the same way - this woman deserves sympathy, she was a victim because she had only one partner as opposed to a woman who perhaps had multiple partners and picked up an STD along the way.

That was my gut reaction. It could be only that the writer wanted to make it clear that the STDs were a result of the abusive situation, but it seems as if there are other ways to communicate that. Overall, I found this article interesting but not well written and that one sentence (as well as the focus on younger women - as if older women may not face the same violence) are what I will remember the most.